When County Politics Is a Family Business;Westchester Feels the Spanos' Presence

By JOSEPH BERGER

Published: April 26, 1996

WHITE PLAINS, April 25—
There are moments when government in Westchester County seems like a family business, the Spano family business.

Leonard N. Spano, the barrel-chested paterfamilias, is County Clerk. The eldest of his 16 children, Nicholas A. Spano, is a State Senator, the leader of the county's Republican Party and an heir apparent for majority leader of the State Senate, making him one of the state's most powerful politicians. Michael J. Spano, the ninth child, who is widely regarded as the family sweetheart, is a rising Yonkers Assemblyman.

Spano children, in-laws and cousins are sprinkled through the county bureaucracy, working as police, corrections and probation officers, mechanics and computer analysts. In 1993, when Leonard Spano was asked for a list of relatives holding county jobs, he came up with 19.

"There's no sign in the personnel office that says, 'Spanos need not apply,' " the plain-spoken Mr. Spano said, denying any intentional nepotism. "You go into some families, the father is a cop, the son is a cop. You go into politics, so the family gravitates in that direction."

Still, this teeming presence has fed talk of a Westchester dynasty, a small-time, less rarefied version of the Kennedys of Massachusetts or the Roosevelts of New York. Critics say the Spanos have used their network of influence to secure jobs for relatives, reward supporters with favorable legislation and punish enemies by financing campaigns against them.

"I don't think that government exists to be an employment agency for any particular family," said James P. Doody, a White Plains lawyer who ran unsuccessfully against Leonard Spano in 1993.

Richard L. Brodsky, a Democratic Assemblyman from Greenburgh who is co-chairman of the Westchester delegation with Nicholas Spano, said he worked effectively with the Spanos but believed they had created an "empire" reaching into all levels of government.

"You take on a Spano in a ward in Yonkers and all of a sudden maybe you've got trouble moving a bill in Albany," he said.

But many politicians, even Democrats, view the Spano network with chuckling amusement. They see it as less than sinister, noting that a certain amount of trading favors is necessary to keep government operating.

For example, Alfred B. DelBello, a Democrat, acknowledged that when he was County Executive, he "positioned" a couple of Spanos in low-level jobs to maintain good relations with the County Board of Legislators, of which Leonard Spano was a member.

"Lenny was not the least bit reluctant to get relatives in government," he said. "The job opened up and a Spano would apply."

Still, he praised the Spanos for hard work, congeniality and shrewd instincts.

"The key to their success is that they're basically nice people," he said. "If you're willing to help people on both sides of the aisle and play the game straight and you're good to your word, people like you and you get elected."

The Numbers Tell Part of the Story

One reason for the Spano influence is sheer numbers. There are well over 400 Spanos in Westchester, many available to serve as campaign foot soldiers. Leonard Spano's 16 children and 26 grandchildren have never strayed far; 12 of the children live within blocks of his homestead in the Park Hill section of Yonkers.

"There are jokes about the whole family being on the public dole," said Sy J. Schulman, the Mayor of White Plains and a Democrat. "But if you have 16 children, you've got to get jobs. Even if only 25 percent of them got government jobs, he'd have four children in government jobs."

The Spanos have absorbed politics by the same osmosis that children raised in real estate families pick up the intricacies of balloon mortgages. When Leonard Spano first ran for office from Yonkers's blue-collar southwest in 1967, he had 14-year-old Nick ringing doorbells. In third grade, Michael plastered campaign posters on the windows of his school, St. Peter's, and was admonished by a priest: "I don't think the Pope will be happy with all these signs."

As a result of such exposure, Nicholas, now 42, and Michael, 32, were both Republican district leaders in Yonkers at 18. Nicholas won his bid for the Assembly at 25.

"It's an education to be involved in politics," said Leonard Spano, 65, beaming at all that his family has accomplished since his father emigrated from Italy. "You get to find out what people want, what their complaints are, what they're unhappy with, what they're happy with."

Still, there are Democrats and Republicans who don't view the Spano dynasty as a benign product of shoe-leather democracy. (The Democratic County chairman is also a Spano, Andrew J., but he is not a relative.)

"If you look at the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, the Rockefellers," said Thomas J. Abinanti, "they were on a grander scale but they were using the family power to improve not the family, but society." Mr. Abinanti, a Democrat, is a county legislator who is considering challenging Nicholas Spano for the Senate.

Mr. Abinanti said his potential opponent was too close with labor unions, the restaurant and tobacco industries, and other interests. In recent months, he said, restaurateurs opposed a Westchester ban on smoking in restaurants and hired as their lawyer Albert J. Pirro, a major Republican fund-raiser whose law firm contributed $5,000 to Mr. Spano in 1995. Mr. Spano later backed legislation permitting smoking sections in the entire state, which would nullify the Westchester regulation.

"Those who give to party leader Spano get from Senator Spano," Mr. Abinanti said.